Committee
Reviewing Military Compensation System
By
Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service
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WASHINGTON,
May 2006
–
A yearlong review of total military compensation
could eventually result in streamlined
allowances and a fundamental shift in thinking
on how the uniformed services pay members and
retirees.
The
war on terrorism "focuses our efforts in
ensuring we do the right things by the folks we
are deploying," retired Air Force Brig.
Gen. Jan D. "Denny" Eakle said in an
interview yesterday.
Eakle
heads the 10th Quadrennial Review of Military
Compensation, which got under way April 1. This
review will focus on five main areas:
-
Ensuring
the compensation system supports an adequate
supply of military personnel with the
abilities and experience to meet national
security objectives;
-
Maintaining
quality of life for military personnel and
their families;
-
Re-evaluating
special and incentive pays to enhance
service flexibility;
-
Assessing
the need for more flexible recruiting and
retention authorities; and
-
Reviewing
the retirement system.
One
of the most dramatic issues being looked at has
to do with how the department figures active vs.
retired pay. "Today we have a compensation
system that provides an awful lot of deferred
compensation, compensation to those who have
served, those who are retirees," Eakle said.
She
noted that employees are "vested" in
their retirement programs at five years in most
civilian corporations. However, military
retirees generally must serve 20 years before
being eligible for any percentage of retired pay.
"The
balance between the deferred compensation and
the current compensation, the compensation being
paid to those who are currently in places in
harm's way, is very different than you would see
in other compensation systems," Eakle said.
"I believe that the war on terror has
focused our efforts on making sure that we are
taking care of today's servicemen and women."
The
recently concluded Defense Advisory Committee on
Military Compensation recommended in February
that members be vested at 10 rather than 20
years and that retirement payments be graduated
ranging from 25 percent of base pay at 10 years
to 100 percent of base pay at 40 years. The
group also recommended that the government
contribute 5 to 10 percent of base pay to
military members' Thrift Savings Plans, as is
the case for federal civilians.
This
committee's recommendations serve as a starting
point for the quadrennial review. Eakle
explained that the purpose of her review is now
to take these recommendations and look at their
implications on the ability of the services to
recruit and retain personnel and to further
develop them to enable them to be effective for
the services.
She
said any recommendations would be implemented
"several years" in the future because
it would take time to work out details and, in
some cases, legislation would need to be changed.
"No
current retiree or current military member would
be affected by the changes ... we may recommend,"
she said. "But you could end up with a
system where there would be less in the retired
pay because we would bring it forward and pay it
to the individual while they are serving."
She
also said any such shift away from deferred
compensation would be accompanied by initiatives
to better educate servicemembers on financial
planning for retirement.
Another
change that would come out of the quadrennial
review is simplifying the vast and confusing
system of special pays and allowances military
members are entitled to under various
circumstances. Eakle said this system of more
than 60 different pays and allowances accounts
for no more than 5 percent of total compensation
but are labor-intensive to manage and track. It
also makes it difficult for servicemembers to
effectively monitor that they are receiving
correct pay and allowances.
"If
we make them simpler, we will reduce the
management requirements for watching so many
pays, ... and the member would have a better
understanding of what they are entitled
to," she said.
The
quadrennial review takes into account unique
recruiting and retention challenges for each of
the seven uniformed services. In addition to
Defense Department service branches, the
review's recommendations will apply to the Coast
Guard, in the Department of Homeland Security;
the commissioned corps of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, in the
Department of Commerce; and the commissioned
corps of the Public Health Service, in the
Department of Health and Human Services.
"The
pay regulations that apply to the Department of
Defense and the Coast Guard apply to those two
services as well," Eakle said.
The
ninth Quadrennial Review of Military
Compensation, completed in 2002, recognized that
the modern force is more educated than in the
past and that current pay doesn't include a
premium high enough to retain this more educated
force. A large pay raise targeted toward
mid-grade enlisted members and junior officers
came about because of this realization.
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Biography:
Brig.
Gen. Jan D. "Denny" Eakle, USAF, Retired
Related Article:
Advisory
Committee Recommends Big Changes to Military Pay System
New
Personnel System Presents Opportunity, Program
Officer Says
By Samantha L.
Quigley
American Forces Press Service
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| WASHINGTON,
Feb. 2006
–
The Defense Department's new National Security
Personnel System is on track for initial
implementation, the system's program executive
officer told the human resources specialists
attending a symposium here yesterday.
"Were still on track to deploy folks
into Spiral 1.1 in April," Mary Lacey told
attendees. "We've got over 11,000
(non-union) employees that are going in."
The NSPS Program Executive Office designed
the system for a staggered implementation based
on a spiral model, she said. The approach has
lead to delays, she noted, but this has given
the office a chance to tweak the program as it
builds it.
The purpose of the spiral model to introduce
NSPS was to build a little, test a little and
learn a lot, Lacey said. "I'm actually
confident that we're doing this the right
way," she added.
The most recent implementation delay was
caused by a need to take another look at the
system's evaluation system. Lacey said it was
robust but hard to understand and to put into
operation. The NSPS has spent the last six weeks
reworking that portion of the system, she said.
Some whom NSPS will affect have expressed
hesitation over changes it will bring, even if
the changes are good for them, Lacey said. She
added that communication and training will help
ease these fears.
"Conversations need to happen very, very
frequently. Employees will be demanding more of
supervisors' time. They'll be demanding more
thoughtful conversations," she said.
"If you find the time, while it's painful
the first year, you will get paybacks
forever."
One thing supervisors should be communicating
to their employees is results.
"We're not just going to measure
transactions," she said. "Transactions
are interesting, but they're not necessarily
something that compel us to action or the only
thing that helps us achieve our
(objective)."
Supervisors also should set and level
expectations for employees, Lacey said.
Employees need to realize not everyone is a star
performer every year.
"When supervisors are giving their
people feedback throughout the year, you need to
talk in NSPS terms," she said. "A '3'
is not a bad evaluation. That's a great, solid
evaluation."
NSPS evaluation ratings are based on a scale
of 1 to 5, with the former number being an
unsuccessful evaluation and the latter a 'role
model' assessment.
Under NSPS, evaluations will determine an
employee's compensation. The system's three pay
bands allow flexibility to adjust salaries and
compensation to be competitive with the civilian
sector, Lacey said.
"It's an important flexibility that we
think we need to have in the department,"
Lacey said. "But we need to watch it. It
needs to be fair (and) we need to make sure that
in the process of being fair we don't ... price
ourselves out of business."
Also important is that employees feel the
system is being applied fairly, she said, adding
that feeling will come from continuous
conversations with supervisors so that employees
know what's expected. These conversations, and
the formal evaluations, need to be conducted
with a measure of sensitivity, she said.
"People's feelings are important in
this," Lacey said. "The people are the
appreciating assets in the Department of
Defense."
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Biography:
Mary
Lacey
Related Site:
National
Security Personnel System
New
Incentives, Marketing Aim to Attract Military Recruits
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON,
June 2005
–
The Army hopes to introduce new incentives to attract recruits
while working to educate parents, teachers and other adults who
influence young people's decision to enlist about the long-term
benefits of military service.
Army leaders hope to boost enlistment bonuses to help
jump-start sagging recruiting rates, according to Bill Carr,
acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel
policy. They also hope to introduce a new benefit that helps
soldiers purchase homes.
The incentives, if approved by Congress and signed by the
president, would not apply to all soldiers, but will be
"selectively applied" depending on the circumstances,
Carr explained during an interview today with the American
Forces Press Service and the Pentagon Channel.
The current enlistment bonus is $20,000, the rate introduced
in 1999. The version of the fiscal 2006 Defense Authorization
Bill under consideration in the House of Representatives
proposes raising this figure to $30,000. Carr said the Army is
"hopeful we can do even better than that."
Also under consideration is pilot program that would pay up
to $50,000 in mortgage costs for recruits who enlist for eight
years of duty, Carr said.
Carr said this concept is popular among potential recruits,
but resonates particularly well among adults who influence their
decisions regarding military service.
Army officials express concern that these
"influencers" are steering young people away the
military over concerns that they'll be deployed to Iraq or
elsewhere in harm's way.
In response, the Army has launched an information effort to
help turn them around and demonstrate that the military is
"a good foundation to build the rest of your life on,"
Carr said.
Television and magazine ads directed to these influencers
emphasize the educational and personal growth opportunities the
military provides.
"The way we represent ourselves has shifted," Carr
said. "In the past, we talked to youth about the advantages
of them joining the service. But the message has changed more
toward why it makes sense for your son or daughter to serve in
the military today and ... what's in it for them."
The message doesn't minimize the possibility that recruits
may go into combat and face danger, Carr said. Instead, it
focuses on "the certainty of what the military has to
offer," he said.
When comparing the two, "it's a wonderful
calculation," Carr said.
Carr said it's too soon to tell how the new ads or the
introduction of shorter-term enlistments have affected
recruiting.
The Army began offering a 15-month enlistment option last
month that gives recruits in 59 different specialties a choice
of following military duty with service in a program such as
AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. The 15-Month Plus Training
Enlistment Option was first introduced in October 2003 as a
pilot program in 10 of the Army's 41 recruiting battalions, but
was expanded nationwide in mid-May.
He's optimistic that recruiting will pick up during the
summer months, when new high school graduates begin visiting
their local recruiting stations. Compared to the traditionally
slow spring recruiting season, "summer is an enormously
more favorable environment," he said.
Biography:
Bill
Carr
Related Article:
DoD
Won't Resort to Draft or Sacrifice Quality to Boost Numbers
Bush Delivers
$419.3 Billion DoD Budget to Congress
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2005 – President Bush's $419.3 billion fiscal
2006 defense budget request continues the work of transforming
the military, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today.
Rumsfeld spoke during a news conference unveiling the Pentagon
budget.
People are the highest priority in the budget. It funds a 3.1
percent pay raise for military personnel and raises the basic
allowance for housing 4 percent. The budget request expands
Tricare to cover mobilizing reservists and their families. For
civilian personnel, the pay raise is capped at 2.3 percent.
The budget is a 4.8 percent increase over what Congress
enacted in fiscal 2005.
Changing the military to combat the threats of the global war
on terrorism is central to the fiscal 2006 budget request,
Rumsfeld said. "While our world and the threats to it had
changed markedly since the end of the Cold War, the assumptions
underlying U.S. force structure, planning and our posture around
the world had not changed to the same extent," he said.
The Sept. 11 attacks and the campaigns in Afghanistan and
Iraq provided the impetus for the department's transformation
efforts to a more agile, lethal and expeditionary force.
"I've noticed people have thought that when people use the
terms 'agile,' 'lethal' and 'expeditionary,' they think that
means smaller," Rumsfeld said. "It doesn't. It isn't
the size of the force that was wrong; it was the shape of the
force and the capability of the force."
The secretary said all branches of the military are
restructuring to supply more combat power with increased speed
and lethality, agility and precision. Ground forces are at the
forefront of that change in 2006. The Army will restructure and
go from a "division-centric" idea to capabilities
built around brigade combat teams. The Marines will add two
battalions of infantry and various support and combat-support
specialties.
The president's overriding priority is for commanders to have
the troops and equipment they need to prevail in the global
struggle against extremism, Rumsfeld said. At the same time, the
military must build for the future and counter all the possible
threats posed today.
"We must take care of our troops by ensuring they and
their families continue to receive the support they need in
recognition of their sacrifices and their service to our
country," he said.
And, finally, the secretary said, DoD must be a good steward
of U.S. taxpayers' money.
The secretary said the only way you can look at the fiscal
2006 budget is to look at the supplemental requests too. The
supplemental request to cover operations in the global war on
terrorism will be delivered to Congress next week, officials
said, and that will also help cover some Army restructuring
costs.
"The Army is engaged in a multiplicity of
activities," Rumsfeld said. "They are in the process
of rebalancing the skill sets between the active force and the
reserve components." This means that the service must
retrain some soldiers and re-equip units.
The change will mean the active component, for example, will
expand from 33 brigades to 43. "(The Army is) doing it at a
time when they are bringing back forces and resetting them from
their deployments … around the world," Rumsfeld said.
"That offers a wonderful opportunity to do all those things
at once. The bulk of that was in the nature of resetting the
force they decided to put it in the supplemental for this year
and next year. Thereafter, we'll decide what portion of these
activities should be in the supplemental or the regular
budget."
Biography:
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
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